Just under three months after Bob’s passing, another prisoner was put to death in the execution chamber, the second person to die of lethal injection in California. Lee didn’t personally know Danny Williams, but that didn’t lessen his disbelief in the practice of executing prisoners. He still felt pain at the death of a living being, any living being, whether human or animal. Life was precious to Lee. That society could toss these lives away so callously, just reinforced his feelings about the decline of today’s society.
After those two deaths, Lee began to feel even lonelier. Sure, he had a television, books, writing supplies, pen-friends in Southern California, Florida, Australia, England, and Ireland; he even knew several people that under different circumstances he would call friends—both among fellow prisoners and some of the guards. Still, he was feeling lonely. But he knew that coping with that loneliness was a sign of strength. He turned that loneliness into productive thinking, creative writing. If nothing else, being in prison gave him an opportunity to think and create. But with the thinking, came the memories. Memories of his ex-girlfriend, his wife and daughter, his co-workers, his work, his neighbors and friends; going to Zion National Park, the Grand Canyon, Sequoia National Park, and to beaches along the southern coast of California. Memories of raising chickens, ducks, and quail from their eggs in an incubator. Memories of traveling to many beautiful places, taking photographs and displaying them proudly. All of which were now just memories that brought him happiness in his dreams and tears when he was awake.
He often had trouble sleeping at night. He never went to sleep before midnight, usually staying awake until two or three in the morning, writing or reading, listening to music on one of the prison television channels. On the days that he did not go out to the exercise yard, he slept late, just like he did on his days off before being arrested. He’d wake up for breakfast, then would lay back down and sleep. Wake up to take a shower and shave, receive a sack lunch, then go back to sleep again. He’d finally awaken for the day around three in the afternoon, staying awake until those early morning hours. For the most part, he kept his silence, speaking only when someone else spoke to him first. He kept his eyes open and his mouth closed, did what he was told to do, and wouldn’t let anyone talk him into doing anything he could get into trouble for.
Finally, Lee obtained the phone numbers for several family members: two of his three brothers, the eldest of his three sisters, and his mother and youngest sister. He placed calls to each of them, hoping to re-establish some kind of familial relationship with them. He had made the same request of both brothers, only one: would they please send him a couple dollars worth of stamps so he could continue writing letters? Both brothers promised him that they would send stamps. But neither followed through on their promises. He made the same request of his sister and got the same result. His mother and youngest sister were more receptive. They sent what they could. Some stamps, a quarterly care package. It wasn’t much, of course. His mother was on a fixed income. But she wanted him to keep calling her to let her know how he was and what was happening with his case. She always accepted the collect charges when he called. But he wouldn’t call her more than once a week, unless it was an emergency, because he didn’t want her phone bill to get too high.
That phone, however, was in the name of a third brother, the brother that had been circulating lies about Lee and attempting to build his own reputation up on other lies; the opportunist. For one reason or another, that brother put a collect-call block on their mother’s phone so Lee was no longer able to call her. This was Edward, the brother who made promise after promise to make sure Lee would be taken care of and would want for nothing in prison. Promises that he broke as soon as he made them. Promises that Lee now believed Edward had never even intended on keeping. Edward claimed that his own marriage ended because Lee was found guilty of the crimes filed against him. In actuality, Edward’s marriage ended because he molested his wife’s baby sister, going to jail and being put on probation because of it. Edward also claimed he was a partner in a non-alcoholic, teenage night club that was shut down because of Lee’s troubles. In actuality, he was not a partner in the business and it folded because it was in the wrong location. All Edward was doing was trying to divert the blame from himself and build himself up in the eyes of others at the expense of everyone else. Something he had been doing all his life.
This story is by no means finished. Lee’s having been sent to prison with a death sentence is a sad tale of a travesty of justice, a disaster in his life and in our legal system. Guilt declared on an innocent man who respects people, a man who befriends everyone no matter what their station in life. A man who accepts each person he meets at face value. He often ignores wrongs done to him and never retaliates against those people. He feels no anger at anyone for the situation that has befallen him. Not even the prosecutor or the judge in charge of his case. During the final moment’s of Lee’s trial, the prosecutor said that Lee must not like him very much, and then he’d chuckled. But the prosecutor was wrong. Lee felt no dislike for the prosecutor. He felt afraid of the power that the prosecutor has at his command. That he could prosecute an innocent man, convince the public that someone had committed such heinous crimes with as little true evidence as he had presented at the trial. That kind of power should not be in anyone’s hands. So Lee now sits in his solitude, feeling the pain and loneliness that has come with his current circumstances. Yet he silently laughs at the people who think they have hurt him by sentencing him to death.
Little do they realize just how much they have helped him. He knows the truth! He knows that he is innocent. He isn’t afraid of death. He has been to the other side and come back. He is aware of things that others don’t even suspect. Lee knows what is coming next and he welcomes it!
19
Last Words
On Death Row, Bill Suff has a color television and a memory typewriter. The TV comes with its speaker disconnected internally—you have to use headphones to hear. Inmates can buy TVs and typewriters and radios and computers and all manner of goods and appliances from a catalogue supply service managed by the warden’s wife. In fact, inmates cannot get major goods or supplies any other way, not even as gifts.
Books are not allowed in under any circumstance.
Even lawyers cannot bring books to their inmate clients.
Accordingly, Bill Suff will not see this book in print, and so I had to read it to him over the phone once it was done. I had always pledged to him that his response to the book would be printed herein.
When I finished reading to Bill, there was silence on the other end of the line.
“Bill? You still there?”
“Yeah. I’m here.”
“Not what you expected, right?”
“No, not what I expected—parts of it anyway.”
“And?”
“You make me sound guilty.”
“And, for the record?”
“I’m innocent.”
“Of everything?”
“Everything they charged me with.”